秋が来たので僕の未来について考えます

Yep, I'm trying to think about my future while the fall comes creeping ing. Old friends have left, family and friends at home have become a little more distant as life winds back up to speed leaving little time for things and people not holding a participatory role in life. I don't really know how I got busy again, nor really what I've been busy with. I know what I've been doing, but it doesn't feel like it would be enough to fill all my time.
In August, I had started to feel that recontracting with Matsue Kita High School was a mistake. I was frustrated by the dogmatic way in which the vice principle responsible for the ALT position, my job, was handling my requests for professional development during down time at school. I was also getting pretty tired of feeling like my efforts were lost on my students, interested as some of the more studious and outward looking ones were. I just felt that it was not a place I was able to make any kind of real difference.
However, throughout September, I began noticing little things that seemed like my teaching and coaching had been having positive effects. Students I had never before realized were interested in English came out of the woodwork for the season of speech contests, bringing with them a shy but keen approach that may be more representative of the rest of their classes than I had realized. They actually appeared to like me and see me as something more than just the guy who comes in to speak gibberish to us once a week. I don't know exactly what they view me as, but I'm starting to realize it's generally favourable. I have to keep reminding myself that they're teenagers, plagued by rampaging hormones and scant experience. They haven't really even been socialized to fit into Japanese society yet, so I shouldn't find it odd that I have difficulty with them sometimes. There's always a reason people behave the way the do and I have to keep that in mind while I try to coach them in English.
And that's really what I'm here doing. I'm not really a teacher, I'm a motivator, a coach. Whether or not I have OC class with them will not make or break their test scores on it's own. 45 minutes of oral communication taught in English, where the kids use Japanese to figure out the English they've been learning for the past four years really doesn't cut it as far as learning an L2 is concerned. What it does do though, is give them an oportunity to interact with someone who sees the world from a completely different perspective. I notice subjects, they notice context. I think about nouns, they think about verbs and relations. English is really hard for them because it's so difficult to see any point to it in a place as remote as Matsue. The images they need to conjure in their minds as motivation are not readily available, but with me there, showing an interest in them, learning their language, showing how excited I am to be learning and how intermittant my success is, they get an image of what English can be. English can be friendly, interesting and interested. You can live in it. That's what I do, I motivate them in ways that no-one else in the school can. I'm a living breathing person from a completely different civilization who never-the-less is both a friend and advocate.
So from that perspective, I keep slogging away, making those lesson plans fun, making sure I keep ahead of any schedule changes and making sure I get to know the people. I don't really regret the second contract anymore and I'm thinking seriously about teachers college now. I don't know if I'd like to teach ESL for too much longer, but I'm pondering Env. Studies and Biology. I'm over being sad about friends leaving and the uncertainty of life etc... in retrospect, I'm not sure exactly why I was upset. People come and go, and we should be happy to have the time we do with them, but nothing lasts forever, so I shouldn't expect it to, either emotionally or intellectually. Heck, I'm even a different person than when I came to Japan last year. If I can end up different after only a year, the world with all its people and things has more than enough potential for change. The thing that should be surprising is that it doesn't change faster.
That's not to say I don't miss my friends and family, because I do very much, but as a very good friend told me once, "yeah, it's sad to leave everyone behind, but think about all the new friends you'll make, all the new and interesting things you'll see and do." I keep a stone that she gave me years ago in my pocket that reminds me of the spirit and letter of that. It's a somatic "ganbatte" reminder. I reminder to go get 'em. To do and see more, to meet more people on more authentic and interactive levels and to just generally give my life my all.
Even with that stone in my pocket, I sometimes forget to rub it with my thumb and I usually have a poor few weeks for it, this time it was late summer. There's always some trigger, though, that reminds me that there's a smooth polished stone in my pocket that's my ganbatte reminder. Once I remember that, I give it a rub and it's like drinking a pot of coffee without the heartburn. So now, I spend my fall days walking to school, enjoying the dimming sunshine, the cooling weather and the little blown leaves from the sakura trees. I spend them talking to anyone who's willing to listen and asking questions of strangers left, right and centre. I've been seeing more of what Izumo area has to offer and meeting up with more friends. All of this translates into more energetic lessons and more genkiness at school. I feel sharper for it and way more alive than I did during August.